The Week in which We Saw Miracles

On this week's episode of Sister Cale in Columbus-Sister Cale and
Sister Gordon accomplished their finding goals and talked to all the
people, or at least, they talked to as many people as they possibly
could and there were lots of cool things that happened because of
that. Some of those people set up return appointments (that fell
through, but that's just missionary life for you) and others sent them
to talk to other really cool people. They solved the mystery of the
locked bathroom door in the locked apartment (poor design  for
functionality), got estimates on our missionary car (verdict- it seems
terribly expensive to pay for a cosmetic repair that is barely
noticeable unfixed and that doesn't interfere with the functionality
of the car), and Sister Cale heard all the music in the land while out
and about that brought joy to her soul (Erasure, John Mayer, Howard
Jones...now if I could only send a positive request into the universe
for some Sting).

Hi Loves!

What a totally and entirely insane week. Seriously, Sister Gordon is
such an awesome companion! We were able to accomplish so much together
and it was so cool to see that even though we are both kind of nervous
about knocking doors and contacting alone, knowing that we are
together gives us courage. I feel so blessed to be able to see the
blessings of this companionship. In the land of finding this week we
didn't yet find anyone that is actually interested in meeting with us
(all our return appointments fell through), but we learned some really
important things-if someone has a dog, talk to them about their dog,
it makes the transition into missionary conversation less awkward.
It's miraculous. Saturday nights at some apartment complexes are
absolutely dead and you will be hard pressed to reach your contacting
goal there (we did it, but only because I think Heavenly Father knew
how hard we were willing to work to make it happen). All things
considered, even if the finding didn't pan out with a handful of new
people to teach (or even one), I still know that we did good work and
were able to bless people the way that Heavenly Father needed us to.

The best part of this week was our miracle with Garrett. Sister Gordon
and I had both felt like we needed to invite Garrett to be baptized in
our upcoming lesson, and we needed to invite him to be baptized before
going back to school in August. We taught the Plan of Salvation and it
was so cool to see once again how much he had been prepared to receive
the doctrine. It all just sounded so familiar to him and he had no
questions, he kept saying "It's just so clear." When we finished going
through the Plan of Salvation we invited him to be baptized...in
August...prefacing the whole thing with the understanding that just a
few weeks away would be absolutely crazy in a normal rational world.
We pulled out a calendar and started looking for a possible day.
Looking at the calendar it became clear to all of us that the only
available days were either this last weekend, or this next weekend.
CRAZY. So fast. Well, he was pretty sure that he wanted to do it,
which meant that we needed to teach The Gospel of Jesus Christ, all
the commandments, and Laws and Ordinances in the next ten days. So we
taught the Gospel of Jesus Christ and he had profound things to add to
what we had to teach and at the end of the lesson said he knew he
needed to be baptized, so why wait. I have heard missionaries tell
stories about their miracle investigator who was so prepared to be
baptized that they were baptized in just a few weeks. I had honestly
thought that was something that I wasn't likely to experience as a
missionary. After all, we taught Dan for almost a third of my mission.
So that's probably the thing I'm most excited for in this upcoming
week. We get to continue teaching crash course lessons and then he'll
be baptized Saturday evening. The spirit does good work.

I've officially reached the point in my life where I have missionary
dreams now. Except they're also just mixed in with what I'm sure my
brain wants to insist is reality. It's weird. And I'm tired...all the
time. But if there were ever something to be consistently tired for at
this point in my life, I'm sure it's this.

The Church is true, life is good, God's in charge, and Satan hates you.

Love,

Jessica

The Week that was just Weird‏

On this week's episode of Sister Cale in Columbus-Sister Cale and
Sister Bassett were woken from their nap by a tornado siren, got
soaked as they ran into the Slack's house to wait out the
tornado-storm-ness, went to interviews and training where Sister Cale
rocked the missionary handbook chase, Sister Bassett went home, Sister
Cale got a new companion Sister Gordon, the sisters had an epic weekly
planning session, and somehow the side of the Sister's car swiped the
front of a member's car when they were leaving the missionary
fireside. 

 Hey Loves,

 So this week has been weird...and I left my keyboard at the apartment,
which is unfortunate because this touch screen isn't exactly ideal.
I'll try to keep writing anyway.

On Tuesday I survived my first legitimate tornado warning. I find that
weather freaks me out a lot more now that I'm not at home with Dad to
protect me...because he has super powers to control the weather?
Anyway, we decided to take a nap with our remaining lunch time because
Sister Bassett's headache was particularly bad. She woke up to the
sound of the tornado siren (I know what tornado sirens sound like now,
cool huh?). Seconds after she said my name we got a text from Buck
asking us how far we were from his house. We were going to respond
that we were just a few minutes away and ask if we should come, but we
just decided to go. Just as we got to the Slack's house the rain
really started coming down and we got soaked just getting into the
house. We worked from their house until the weather cleared up and
then went back to our schedule. I was really grateful to have a safe
place to land in the event that things actually had been bad.

 Wednesday we had interviews with President Daines. I know I was
skeptical before reporting to the field about them, but I love
President and Sister Daines so much. I officially believe that
President Ferrel was right when he said that there was a good chance
that part of the reason I was assigned to labor in Ohio was my mission
president. The training while we were waiting to be interviewed was a
bit long, but also awesome. It's just good to get to be around
missionaries. During interviews Sister Bassett expressed to President
that she felt it would be best to go home to resolve her health
issues. I thought we would probably still have a few weeks together.
Oh boy was I wrong. 

 We had a great day working Thursday and shared the first lesson with
an awesome guy named Garrett. I think it would be more than accurate
to say that Garrett embodies real intent and a desire to find the
truthfulness of the gospel for himself. All I could think while we
taught him was that it was amazing that Heavenly Father had trusted us
to teach Garrett and I really prayed that we wouldn't mess anything
up. I feel that way about all of the people that I get to intact with.
I'm still blown away that Heavenly Father trusts young adults with
something so important.

 Friday morning the call came that Sister Bassett would be going home
the next morning and would need to report to the mission home that
night. President Daines said that the trio of Sisters serving in
Cambridge would drive to our apartment and then my new companion,
Sister Gordon, Sister Bassett, and I would report to the mission home.
Friday was absolutely crazy. There is no other way to explain the
madness that occurred. But somehow everything worked out and we were
able to get everyone where they needed to be by the end of the night.
I was so sad to see Sister Bassett go, but so glad to have Sister
Gordon for a new companion.

Since I've only been in Pataskala for about a week and Sister Gordon
is new as well we get to start a lot of things from scratch. It's
exciting and scary and we are going to do some amazing things
together. I'm excited to see the miracles that come from our work. We
had the world's longest weekly planning session, but when it was all
done we had legitimate plans for not only the people we are teaching,
but for how we are going to find new investigators. Lots of work, but
that is what I'm here for. 

 The missionary fireside last night was awesome as always. It's great
to get to see other missionaries that I have served around. Especially
now that I'm away from my first Ohio home. Our investigator Garrett
came and even brought a friend. They left too fast. After it was over
for us to be able to talk to them, but it was really exciting to see
them there. I also go to see Clarence, Sam, Karen, and Sister Brown
who had all come from Delaware. It felt like a miracle to see my
people. 

Following the fireside we were pulling out of our spot when the
passenger side back door scraped against the front bumper of the car
next to us. I have no concept for how this happened. I did nothing
different from how I always drive and I was paying attention to all my
surroundings. They were parked in the middle of their stall, we were
parked in the middle of ours. I don't get it. All I can say at this
point is I felt like an idiot and was positively horrified. I review
President Uchtdorf's talk "A Matter of a Few Degrees" this morning.
Something obviously was wrong by a few degrees. Blah.

Well, I'm excited to get to work with Sister Gordon and get things
going in Pataskala. 

 The church is true, life is good, God's in charge, and Satan hates you. 

 Love,

Jessica

The Week with a New Home

This week on Sister Cale in Columbus-Sister Cale left her first Ohio
home (it was pretty sad, borderline emotionally traumatizing, and
overall hard, but good), got assigned to her new area (Moundbuilders
3), was once again taught that Heavenly Father knows exactly what he's
doing when he puts you somewhere, had Starbucks for the first time in
six months (Courtesy of Skyler B (review of the s'mores frappe-meh)),
experienced quite the thunder storm with sketchy tornado skies, and it
rained...a lot...again.

Hello Dear Ones,

Greetings from Pataskala, Ohio. Everyone here says that this is God's
Country, or Zion, so I'm pretty excited to get to work and make that
the case. There's a lot of work to be done in our area and it's
equally exciting and scary to know that we have to do a lot of things
from the ground up. We've just got a lot of reestablishing of purpose
to do and a lot of people to find, which is totally workable.

My new companion is the darling Sister Bassett. Guys, you would love
her. She's a Disney and Doctor Who Nerd. The Elders in our district
called us twins the first night because we react similarly and our
laughs sound almost the same a lot of the time. We've had a lot of fun
getting to know each other and the area in the last few days. Sister
Bassett has only been in Pataskala for the last six weeks, and when
you're not the driver, it's pretty easy to still feel lost in an area.
We're going to figure it out though. I'm super grateful to have my
semi-trusty GPS Elder Garmon (Thanks Aubrey!). Our area covers all of
Pataskala, Graville, and Etna. It's kind of huge. But it's going to be
awesome to get to work and find people to teach and serve.

So, last week before I left Delaware we got to go to Ollie's one last
time with the Turner's. I love them so much. Sister Turner is
basically who I want to be when I grow up. She has an amazing
testimony and truly searches out understanding for herself on things
that are hard for her to understand. I want to have that pattern in my
own life. She's also awesome because she belongs to the school of
thought where you don't say "goodbye", you just say "see you later"
(sound familiar Mel?). We also went to say goodbye to our heathen
family. That was rough. I did okay until I got out to the car, which I
was pretty proud of. In a lot of ways I felt like I was leaving home
all over again. Seriously so weird.

Getting to Pataskala has been awesome though. I love the people here
already and our apartment is pretty great. I got my pictures hung up
and my desk is decorated, so I'm sufficiently nested so as to be
happy. I am so glad that I saw that Sister Missionary blog where she
had pictures hanging up over her desk. It has been one of the more
inspired things that I did in preparation for my mission. There's
something brilliant about having your space decorated that makes all
of this seem less transient than it actually is (which I think is
dangerous in some ways, because I could hypothetically have to pack my
whole life up in six weeks, but that doesn't seem entirely likely.

Well lovelies, I hope to have a lot more to report in this next week
as we go out in search of people to teach and serve. There's a lot of
good things just around the corner, I can feel it.

The church is true, life is good, God's in charge, and Satan hates you.

Love you,

Jessica

The Week of Uncertainty

This week on Sister Cale in Columbus-Sister Cale was officially made
Queen of the Easter Eggs (they even gave her a framed certificate),
the Sisters' area book went on a jaunt to Mansfield rather than coming
home from Zone Training Meeting putting the Sisters quite behind in
terms of record entering, Sister Cale went to Worthington on exchanges
and Sister Brown stayed behind, First Friday was hilarious, the 4th of
July was perfection in terms of what a missionary holiday should be,
and Sister Cale spent the whole week in suspense of whether or not she
would be transferred.

Hey Guys,

How's it going? So I'm sorry that this e-mail is coming on Wednesday
when you were expecting it on Monday. They told us as Zone Training
Meeting last Wednesday that now that we have iPads that we will always
e-mail on p-day no matter what, because our key indicators are
submitted automatically anyway now. I'm sorry that I didn't get to
tell you that was happening. It was one of those unfortunate
circumstances where it would have been more convenient if we had known
sooner, but it didn't happen, so that's where we're at. We also found
out at said Zone Training Meeting that we no longer have a time limit
for communicating home either. We are permitted to e-mail all the day
long on p-day...until 6 PM when p-day is technically over. So cool.

Monday night on our way to our dinner appointment we got in the
slightest of car accidents. A dear gentleman backed into our car...at
a light. He was very nice about it and we weren't hurt and the front
bumper of the car was just ever so slightly popped out. No big deal.
At the suggestion of Sister Burthwick, who we were supposed to have
dinner with (we had texted her to tell her that we would be late) we
gave him a Book of Mormon and a mormon.org card. Find everywhere,
right?

That night we got to teach Sister McFarland's seven year old
granddaughter the first lesson. Teaching Jada served as a good
reminder that teaching simply is much harder than I think. It made me
think back to when I got to teach the nine and ten year olds in
primary. I probably need to get back to the place where I teach like
that more often.

There was a lot of record inputting this last week. In some ways I
felt like I was back to being an office worker. I'm growing in
gratitude for the Area Book Planner App because I know it's going to
help us as missionaries be more focused on our purpose and create more
detailed records for the missionaries who come after us. I feel like I
can have more charity towards it now that our data inputting party is
over. We accidentally left our area book at Zone Training Meeting.
When we realized that we didn't have it we called our Elders who are
also our Zone Leaders and asked them if they had happened to pick it
up. At first they pretended that they didn't know what we were talking
about, and then they said that they had grabbed it...at least they
were 90% sure that they had grabbed it. For the record, I wouldn't go
with Elder Petersen's statistical probability predictions if I were
you. Elder Wheeler had accidentally taken it with him on his exchange
to Mansfield. At the very least it was good that we had all been kind
of spastic about it.

Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday are all some crazy kind of
incredibly busy blur. Thursday afternoon started with acquiring a
table cloth for our First Friday table from the Dollar Tree and then
meeting with the Elders to make plans, since we were supposed to be
all good to go the next day. We finally settled on talking to people
about freedoms that they cherish most and taking pictures of them
holding a chalkboard or white board in front of our tree with a
freedom they cherish most. The initial plan was to relate cherished
freedoms back to the fact that we have those freedoms because of our
ancestors, so we should do family history. It sort of worked? We're
going to be able to make an awesome video with all the pictures and
then relate it to family history, so it will work.

Thursday afternoon at the Historical Society Ralph presented me with a
certificate stating that I am Queen of the Easter Egg for all the work
that I did with the Presidential Easter Eggs. It brought great joy and
happiness to my life. And I'm excited to include it in my mission
scrapbook. Haha.

Thursday evening we went on exchanges with the Worthington Sisters. It
was good. It was really bad timing because we had about a million
other things to do, but whatever. It was good. I was happy to be back
in Delaware.

Friday we exchanged back, got things ready for First Friday and got to
work. Even if our initial turn around to family history didn't work
out according to our plans, we were still able to talk about the
gospel and it was amazing to see how much speaking our name tags
really seem to do as so many people would talk to us until they
noticed our name tags and then would suddenly walk away. Good times.
First Friday wasn't as busy this time, likely because of the Holiday
weekend, but we still felt it to be a good use of our time.

Saturday we were able to go out and just talk to a lot of people. We
had a great time in our predictable but totally cute 4th of July
outfits. We got to talk to people before the parade and before a
concert that is put on by the Central Ohio Symphony at Ohio Wesleyan.
It was so neat to get to see what freedoms people cherish and to
surprise them by asking them a question that is intended to get them
to answer something we can testify of. I loved it because there were
lots of opportunities for us to testify. The only reason that I really
missed fireworks was because I missed hearing mom say, "Those ones are
my favorite".

Church on Sunday was busy, but good. It's so weird to me how having
church from 1-4 makes the missionary day suddenly immensely shorter
and there's so much less time to accomplish things. Sheer craziness.
We were able to finish inputting our records and teach a lesson, so
that was nice.

And now I'm just playing the waiting game. I'll send an e-mail out
when I know what's happening or not happening. It's all very strange
to me.

The church is true, life is good (even if I have to pack today and
leave my new home), God's in charge (hence the possible packing and
leaving), and Satan hates you.

Love,

Jessica

The Week Where We Learned About Rejection

This Week on Sister Cale in Columbus-two amazing P-days two weeks in a row (Build-a-Bear and Lush last week, the Columbus Zoo this week), we input records, all the records (not even sort of all the records, we still have so much to do), we saw the OWU Chaplaincy Staff, we got to talk to a guy who had read a bunch of Anti, and it rained (still).

Dear Friendlies,

Hello Loves! Well, here we are again and I'm going to try to write this as fast as is humanly possible because for whatever reason I'm worried that I'm going to run out of time. I apologize in advance for any grammatical errors that occur in my haste. 

This week was a wonky one friends. It was kind of funky. We had a lot of experiences with things just not going quite right. If my life really were a TV show (which it shouldn't be, because it would be largely not funny enough, and lacking enough drama to make it critically acclaimed) this week's episode may have been entitled-The Two that Got Away and the One that Read Anti. 

So last Monday night after our super fun dinner and FHE with the Fowler Family (we played "Nephi Says, Laman Says" and talked about how we should do things with a good attitude), we had time scheduled for contacting. I have THE hardest time with contacting. The struggle is so totally and entirely real and it's very frustrating and just hard. I hate feeling like I'm imposing in on people's lives, even in the message we have to share is arguably significant. But I said I'd do it so we went. At the second house we went to we were able to share "Because He Lives" with two brothers. And it was awesome. They both not only felt the spirit but were able to recognize it.

After it was over the older brother asked how what we believe is different from Christianity. So we talked about the great apostasy and the restoration of the gospel. They were both super excited for us to come back the next day and we were pretty dang thrilled. Well fast forward to less than twenty four hours later, we are back at their house and the older brother comes out to our car and tells us that his mom won't let them talk to us. Devastating. The only consolation in this particular interaction was knowing that we had planted a good seed. We were able to give the brother a copy of the Book of Mormon and a mormon.org card. Hopefully he'll have a good experience with those things. 

Moving on to the one who read Anti...ugh. We went to check on a gentleman that we had an excellent interaction with a few weeks ago. We'd gone back to check on him before but he wasn't home. When we got there Wednesday night he told us that he had something for us and tried to give us the copy of the Book of Mormon that we had left with him back. We wouldn't take it. He wasn't impolite or even mean. Just condescending and so wholly convinced that whatever he had read was reason enough not to talk to us again. It was so disheartening and wholly aggravating to have him tell us that we need to look at our religion more closely before we continue to go around trying to share it with others. Here's the deal-I know that anti is out there. I also know that my testimony is founded on something so much bigger than the actions of men, both taken out of context and left therein. The Book of Mormon brings a greater peace to my life than anything else that I have experienced. I have complete confidence in saying that it is the word of God. It was hard for Sister Brown to stand there while he was talking like that. After we left we sat in our car and read from the Book of Mormon for about fifteen minutes. I love that book. It is the most precious thing that I have as a missionary.  It was a straight connection to light after such a dark interaction. 

One of the highlights of this last week was our district meeting. Elder Teames talked about how we truly cannot fulfill our purpose as missionaries without love. He said that we can't afford to attempt to teach these people if we aren't going to allow ourselves to become fully invested in loving them. And yes, that opens us up to hurt, but it's the risk we have to take in order to do things as the Savior would. It made me think of Molly in Peter and the Starcatcher, "It hurt because it mattered." I'm seeing that a lot in my work and in my life as a missionary. Things hurt because they matter. The growing that is happening hurts because it matters. And I'm grateful for every single moment that something has hurt, because it allows me to feel my Savior's love and lets me know that I'm loving others as he would. 

I love you all. I hope you have remarkable weeks!

The Church is true, life is good, God's in charge, and Satan hates you. 

Love,

Jessica